passport control

Lot’s of reasons for lots of people. Of course I will not count all the reasons that may be, but a reason we’ve been to Copenhagen a few years ago, was among the most interesting ones.

If you’ve read the “about us” page, you already know by now that I am from a semi-developed country. Being from a semi-developed country means that you are a big potential of being a refugee-at least in the eyes of many developed countries. Most of the countries worth to travel, requires a visa from me and my people. Not the one, you can pay and buy from the airport. The one that you need to apply well in advance, with files of documents, proving that you are rich enough that you would not dare to migrate to their country. Moreover, to take this visa they ask for a huge amount of money (for instances a visa for our family to Britain costs around 2.500 usd.) That’s why, many people in my country just prefers to travel to countries that do not require visa. But more moreover, some countries procedures last weeks, which means being apart from your passport. That’s why we did not go to New Zealand for instance, as we were told that we need to give our passports to the consulate for about a month. They must be crazy.

For EU countries (not all, but most) we are required to have a Schengen visa, which can be taken from any EU (not all, but most) country consulates and be used in Schengen countries plus Switzerland. OK I am coming to the point: The reason we did a long weekend to Copenhagen was, our 1 year Schengen visa was about to end (which was taken from Belgium consulate), so we thought we must go to somewhere in EU, in the end of the week we were in. After a brief search of alternative flights and hotels and “list of have not been countries”, we ended up in Copenhagen-a country only I had been before, my husband and our son did not.

Unfortunately the visa humiliation does not end in the passport. When we reached Copenhagen airport, we were among the first ones got off the plane. However, just after the first corridor, there was a security guy checking the passports and the visas and when he saw ours, (I do not know why) he probably decided that we very much look like refugees and made us stand at one side, to consult about our visas to many of his friends. (And I do not know why) this took them about 20 minutes, while in the mean time, all the other passengers passed us, with the thought of “They must have done something wrong” in their minds and eyes.

They finally let us “in” and we had a very nice long weekend escape as a family, but we do not think that the humiliation in that border was something we deserve and I will prefer not to go to Denmark again, if I have chance not to.

Imagine there’s no countries, it isn’t hard to do…I miss John Lennon!!